A Whole New Approach To Serving Customers Emerges
For capital-intensive businesses, large purchasing decisions can be fraught with risk. Making a good decision involves more than just solving a specific business problem. It means understanding the total cost of ownership and having assurances that after the sale, service and support are available as needed. Filamatic has announced two important initiatives to provide assurance to customers.
A new, three-member Service Team will be dedicated to on-site visits for installation, maintenance, repair, operator training and retrofits. In addition, the company now offers a new Service Agreement to help new and existing customers maintain mission critical equipment at the lowest possible cost.
These initiatives are designed to keep customer machines operating at peak performance levels, maintain maximum operating efficiency and minimize downtime.
Service and Assembly: Servicing current machines, building new ones
Mark Evans leads Filamatic's Service Department. He explained the new approach by saying, "normally, members of our assembly team would travel to the customer's site to execute installations, repairs, training, retrofits and maintenance. But we found that we needed those same assembly team members on the floor here in Baltimore to meet scheduled completion dates on new machines. So to make sure we were properly serving all of our customers, we decided to create a new, dedicated service team."
Now that the company has dedicated assembly and service groups, they have the best of both worlds, says Evans. "We can get a team out right away to serve our customers in the field and we can meet our target ship dates as we complete new machines."
New Service Agreement, Discount Options
The Service Agreement has multiple benefits and incentives. A complete machinery and procedure assessment will be provided to the customer along with proactive machine evaluations and tune-ups. Operator training is conducted that includes troubleshooting techniques and preventative maintenance tasks. In addition, customers who purchase a Service Agreement will pay 10% less on hourly rates than customers without the agreement. Customers also receive a 10% discount on parts purchased within 60 days of a Service Agreement visit. Customers have the option to purchase one or two year plans, with the two-year plan providing protection against possible rate increases. Site visits can be scheduled twice yearly or quarterly and pricing depends on distance traveled and length of stay on site. Customized plans can be developed to meet the needs of individual customers.
"We are so excited to offer this to our customers," said Filamatic's Marketing Manager, Sara Arn. "Service tends to be reactive and we wanted to stay proactive. Beyond that, our service team members are exceptional technicians and great ambassadors for our company. Our customers are in for a treat."
Helping Large Companies and Small Ones
The Service Agreement is expected to bring significant benefits to both small and large filling operations. Smaller firms typically don't employ maintenance staff and they will save time and money with regularly scheduled preventative maintenance and refreshers on training. Larger operations, with critical production schedules, can avoid costly downtime with improved operator training.
About Filamatic
Filamatic, a division of National Instrument, LLC, is manufacturer of liquid filling equipment and integrated liquid packaging machinery systems. Since 1950 they have been serving the pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, cosmetic, chemical specialty and food industries. For more information visit www.filamatic.com.
SOURCE: Filamatic